To The Last Page

Following on from his first Michele Ferrara novel, A Florentine Death , the lack of imagination shown in the title of A Death in Tuscany doesn't promise any great leap forward from the inadequacy of police-chief-turned-novelist Michele Giuttari's debut novel. There is however a bit more realism in here in the police procedural and in the subject matter, as well as some contemporary relevance to the crime situation in Italy in contrast to the ludicrous serial-killer plotting of A Florentine Death . It's the death of an unidentified 14 year-old girl, presumably an immigrant, from a drugs overdose that opens up police lines of enquiry into organised crime, drug running and even a cover-up from higher authorities. Chief Superintendent Ferrara's suspicions are aroused, the head of the Squadra Mobile refusing to accept the obvious assumption that the underage girl was a prostitute. When a close friend goes missing however, the Chief switches his attentions to that case, desp...

A fictional novel written by a real-life police chief, A Florentine Death would appear to have all the elements for an explosive exposé of Italian society’s complex and uneasy mix of religion, crime, politics and cover-ups, but sadly the author, whether through prudence or just lack of literary ability, is unable to make much of it. The writing is amateurish, the dialogue unconvincing – I don’t think you can blame the translator in this case - and the tone is horribly self-important throughout. Even more self-regarding is the plot of a serial killer who has hatched an elaborate series of murders of homosexuals which - as the literate riddles he sends to Ferrara indicate - he intends to crown with the death of the Florence Chief of Police himself. The least you could expect from Giuttari is an insider's knowledge of the reality of crime investigation and the political wrangling that goes on around it, but the workings of the police hierarchy are superficially dealt with (perhaps fo...